Blog

The Coming Shift in Our Workforce

CIOInsight published a slideshow recently, called IT is Unprepared for the Millennial Shift. In the slideshow are some intriguing, or alarming, statistics about millennials' use of technology in a business setting and how that it affecting IT departments' planning.

The observation that millennials "[have] rarely had to wait minutes for a computer to boot up, they favor easy-to-use apps over complex operating systems and enterprise-level software." is telling. Whether onsite or in the cloud, enterprise-level software is far more complex today than it was even a decade ago. Those of us who remember the challenges (and angst) involved with the ERP implementations of the 90's know that the learning curve of most enterprise software applications is very steep.

So let's examine the situation from a different perspective.

The speed of business has increased dramatically. Coupled with that speed are the ever rising expectations of customers, partners, and investors. Organizations are trying to keep up by becoming leaner and more agile in their operations. Add to this scenario the fact that employees are receiving less traditional training, with the expectation that they will learn on the job or that a quick thirty minute on-demand web session will suffice.

Remember: Enterprise-level software is complex and mistakes are costly. Why? Enterprise software integrates with numerous domains in an organization and requires an understanding of the business, its operations, its policies and processes, and (to some extent) technology. Reality: All of these domains and their process relationships to one another can't be learned adequately in a short web session or from reading a brief job aid or following a mechanical "walk through" of the enterprise application package!

The result is employees with a scant understanding of how enterprise software integrates with and helps the business function and who often don't appreciate the costly nature of seemingly small errors. Still operations must continue, customer expectations must be addressed, and investors must be satisfied with financial performance.

Why not make life easier for everyone by giving millennial employees a performance support ecosystem that is "always on" while providing the experts who support them with greater insight and flexibility?

One of the many reasons that we built Xprtly! was to fashion a bridge between millennial expectations and organizations' needs for visibility, traceability, and accountability.